New Hope keeps its encouraging focus

Monday

Sep 30, 2013 at 9:47 AM

By STEVE HEISLERCorrespondent

As a Nokomis church founded to help the hurting says good-bye to a founder, members look to retain its basic principles.

Pastor Andrew Simkins was one of five in a living room who began New Hope Christian Church, a nondenominational congregation whose moniker as the "encouraging church" encompasses its outreach philosophy and its Biblical leanings.

"We wanted this church to be involved with real people with real needs," said Simkins, who stepped down in late July. "We were really struck as the primary leadership about how there's so much emphasis in the Bible on reaching out to hurting people."

From Simkins' first days in July 1996 leading a new organization founded by the Southwest Florida Church Planters, his Biblical readings reflected that effort. They included the fourth chapter of John's gospel when Jesus reaches out to a thirsty Samaritan woman who had five husbands.

He noted that verse typifies the church's approach to those in need. Simkins spoke from an Indianapolis suburb, where he is retired but working as a chaplain.

"That's a powerful image to reach out to hurting people. That's a majestic passage," he said. "That's what we're all about, to reach out to those people."

The church of around 120 families partners with South County Habitat for Humanity and, through an arrangement with Payless Shoes, has donated $44,000 in debit cards this year for needy children to buy shoes.

"I had men in the congregation coming up to me with tears in their eyes, saying, 'I remember during the Depression, I went to school with cardboard in my shoes,'" he said. "It was such a touching thing. For a small congregation, it's pretty awesome."

Other outreach involves building toys each year to give at Christmas to Big Brothers and Sisters. The New Hope Stitchers group creates and donates gloves it makes, and the congregation adopted nearly 60 children through World Vision.

Elder Ellery Girard was part of the early church planting group, moving from another church in Sarasota to help form the new congregation.

The focus on God's grace and forgiveness has worked well in addition to weekly communion and a relaxed membership policy that permits membership at other churches or at home congregations for snowbirds, he said.

"This is a place where you're here and you can smile for an hour or two each time you come and there's no strings attached," he said. "All you have to do to be a member is be baptized and profess your faith. We are focused 100 percent on God and not on the building or someone's rules or regulations or traditions."

New Hope incorporates a strong musical tradition to complement each week's message. As the church's director of creative arts, Norman Wright focuses on writing, finding and performing songs that relate to a theme.

Wright plays the guitar, bass and mandolin and is lead vocalist of a six-piece band that plays traditional hymns along with reggae, bluegrass and country.

Since Simkins departed, Wright has coordinated themes with guest pastors auditioning for the open pastor's slot.

For Simkins, who helped the church grow from a rental spot in Palm Square Plaza to buying the current facility on Kilpatrick Road, it is less important who succeeds him and more important the church keeps its values.

"We always want New Hope to have a view of what's going on in the society around us," Simkins said. "My fondest hope is that New Hope will take these central organizing truths and really have them embedded into the DNA and structure of the congregation, those values of caring for hurting people and being externally focused."